Sanusi, other experts dissect Islamic financial system at The Companion’s ‘National Discourse’

The approval of non-interest banking in Nigeria took a lot of efforts and commitment, His Highness, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, has said.

Sanusi spoke recently at the fifth ‘National Discourse’ of The Companion, an association of Muslim men in business and the professions, held at the University of Lagos, Akoka.

The Islamic financial system, Sanusi said, generated unnecessary controversy along religious divides.

The non-Muslims, he said, later embraced it on knowing the huge benefits inherent in it as 40 per cent of those who initially subscribed for Jaiz Bank shares are non-Muslims.

Sanusi said there was no reason Nigeria could not be the centre of Islamic banking in Africa.

The guest speaker, Professor AbdulRazzaq Alaro, debunked a perception that Islamic banking had an agenda to Islamise Nigeria.

The professor of Islamic Law at the University of Ilorin stated that the United Kingdom is the leading promoter of Islamic banking and the head of Islamic Finance in the World Bank, Abayomi Alawode, is a Nigerian Yoruba Christian.

According to him, Islamic finance provides alternative means of investment and finance.

“This is evidenced by the growing demand for, and ever-increasing customer base of, Islamic financial services in the country. From just one and only non-interest financial institution in 2012, the industry has grown in only one decade to four licensed full-fledged non-interest banks, a window of a conventional bank, three microfinance banks, among others,” Professor Alaro said.

Alaro, a member of the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN’)s Financial Regulatory Advisory Council of Experts, said that corporate entities, as well as the Nigerian government, had also benefitted from Islamic banking.

National president of The Companion, Kamil Olalekan, said the topic was influenced by its timeliness and relevance to the Nigerian polity.

The vice chancellor of the University of Lagos, Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, said the university’s Senate had approved Islamic banking and finance programme under the UNILAG Business School to start awarding post-graduate degrees.